* * *
The State controlled store was the same one we had been to before, only with different guards, older, wiser ones. We submitted our ID, and were patted down. The guard found my holster, though I had wisely left my weapon in the car again.
“You didn’t think I would be foolish enough to bring it in, did you?” I said calmly as he blocked our way. “We’re here to buy, nothing else.”
He did a quick check on my emergency management ID, letting us in when the counter man recognized us, likely from the large graft John had left before.
We selected four bottles of relatively inexpensive champagne that now cost fifty dollars per bottle. With the hundred dollar bill that disappeared into the proprietor’s pocket, and two fifties that found their way to the guards, this was getting to be a mind boggling shopping trip!
Locked in the car once more, we both broke into a nervous laugh.
“Oh, let’s not do this again,” I hiccupped nervously, putting my Kel Tec back in the leather holster.
“Deal!” John agreed.
* * *
“So how do you want to celebrate, John?” I asked, putting the steaks and the champagne in the refrigerator. It was the last of our “on” days for power; tomorrow started three days of “off”. I’d been making ice to help keep things cool during those no electricity times. I just hoped it was enough to keep everything from spoiling.
“Tonight, I’d like just the two of us, Allex, and tomorrow I’d like to have a small party,” he replied, slipping his arms around my waist. “Let’s stick one of those bottles in the freezer to chill it down fast.”
“Who would you like to invite tomorrow?”
“I’d like the boys to join us, of course, and Bob and Kathy, and Guy and Dawn.”
“Guy and Dawn went downstate to see Guy’s sister and won’t be back for another week or two,” I informed him. Inviting Bob and Kathy was no surprise to me as John had gotten quite fond of those two. “A small party is good!” Then something occurred to me. “Tomorrow is also Jacob’s birthday. Is a double celebration okay with you?”
“Of course it is. I just want to share some time with our friends and family.” He looked thoughtful before going on. “Is there anything I can do for a present for Jacob?”
* * *
For dinner, we grilled two of the steaks and ate dinner by candlelight on the newly sheltered deck, sipping champagne well into the balmy night.
“Next year we screen in this area!” John said when the mosquitoes started swarming and we had to move inside.
Sometime around midnight the power went out as scheduled. We were asleep long before it happened.
CHAPTER 25
July 14
“You know what would have gone really good with those wonderful steaks last night, John? Fresh mushrooms!” I exclaimed.
“I doubt if the grocery has any, Allex,” he laughed.
“Maybe not, but it’s the right season, and I know where we can pick all the wild ones we want,” I replied, visions of luscious golden orange Chanterelles fried in butter dancing across my mind.
With Eric, Emilee, John and I crowded into the car, Chivas curled up in the hatch with our picking buckets, we set off. The first stop was to Bob and Kathy to see if they wanted to go with us on our foraging jaunt. In the years past, Kathy and I had always done this together.
“I’m really not much of a mushroom picker,” Bob said, declining our invitation. “Kath is the gatherer. I’ve a few things to do around here anyway. We both would be delighted to join you for dinner tonight.”
It was a snug fit, but Kathy sat in the back seat with Emi between her and Eric for the drive up to the Snake River Plains, to our favorite mushroom patch.
When we arrived, the four of us adults spread out some to search for that sometimes elusive orange mushroom, with Emilee staying close to either me or Eric.
We wandered through the low growth of wild blueberry bushes, hanging heavy with unripened fruit and the tall, spindly Juneberry bushes, searching the more open spaces of heavy ground moss.
When Kathy shouted “Mother lode!” we all congregated in the one spot under a scraggly jack-pine tree, so John, Eric and Emi could see what we were all looking for and how to spot them. The little mushrooms popped up underneath the soft gray-green moss that grew abundantly in the sandy, acidic soil, and it was easy to miss them. Even Chivas came to investigate the excitement. She was being good, not venturing too far from Eric, enjoying the freedom like only a growing puppy can.
We picked that area clean and wandered away again, each searching the ground, yet also keeping in visual contact with everyone else. It was very easy to get disoriented, even lost, when following the fairy rings in that terrain. Kathy and I had had that happen in the past, and it was why we always had a compass and a whistle with us at all times.
The picking was very good after all that rain we had and the moss was soft underfoot instead of the crunchy soil we so often find, and we moved about soundlessly. My bucket was nearly half full of beautiful, large mushrooms after just a half hour of searching. When I stood to stretch, I saw the stranger who had approached the area quietly.
“Eric,” I said, alerting him as he harvested mushrooms only a few yards away.
He gave a whistle for the wandering dog, just as a shot rang out, and we heard Chivas yelp in pain.
Eric dropped his bucket and sprinted the hundred yards toward the shooter. Emi started too, until I grabbed her arm.
“Stay here with Kathy!” I commanded, dropping my bucket too, running after my son, John close on my heels.
Eric jumped over a fallen log and made a running tackle just as the guy was raising his rifle again. He brought him down with a hard and very audible thump; the shot went high and wild.
I knelt beside the golden retriever puppy, stroking her nose as I cried with angry tears. Her left rear flank was bent at an awkward angle and she was bleeding from a small hole, her golden fur staining red with wet blood. Chivas lifted her head to lick my hand, her eyes glowing with pain.
Eric had pulled the guy to his feet by his tattered plaid shirt. “You shot my dog!” he snarled.
“It’s a dog,” the guy stated in calm contempt, his scraggly hair framing his dirty face, his dark eyes vacant. “Dogs are animals and all animals are food now.”
I could almost see the waves of anger and hatred rolling off of my son.
Eric’s lip curled. “Then I guess that applies to you too, then, Food.” The guy’s black eyes focused and widened, just as Eric pulled his pistol and shot him. The impact of the .357 ripped his throat out and blasted the body back a dozen feet, now unmoving and half under a low hanging broken tree limb.
“Nobody hurts my kid, and nobody hurts my dog!” he spat out, and turned toward us. He holstered his gun with ease, though he was breathing hard.
I was stunned at what had just happened, however, it was the way of the new world we lived in and I let it pass. We left the body where it landed.
“She’s still alive, Eric, hurt but alive. I don’t think anything vital was hit,” I said. “We need to get her to Mark.” I pulled off the light jacket I was wearing to hide my shoulder holster and wrapped it around Chivas’ back legs to contain the bleeding.
Eric dug his hands down into the spongy gray ground cover to get underneath Chivas’ body, then lifted her gently, cradling her against his chest to begin the long walk back to the car.
John inspected the human body with disinterest and retrieved the fallen rifle.
Kathy and Emilee were holding all the partially filled buckets, waiting hand in hand as we made our way back to them. Emilee started crying when she saw the injured puppy and the blood seeping through my jacket.
I took Emilee aside as the others kept walking, Kathy in the lead.
“Emi, listen to me. Chivas is hurt, but she’s alive and we will do everything we can to keep her that way, you understand? I know you’re very upset, we all are. You need to be brave for
your dad and for Chivas. Chivas knows when you’re sad and that makes her sad. We don’t want that right now, okay?” Emi nodded, and wiped her tears with the back of her small hand, and we both hurried to catch up with the long strides of the others.
“Where did that guy come from?” John bellowed. “I didn’t hear any vehicles.”
“During one of our wanderings last year, Allexa and I kind of got lost,” Kathy said. “While trying to get back to the road, we came across two separate camps. We gave them a wide berth when it was obvious someone was living there. Maybe he was from one of those.”
“Maybe he felt we were the trespassers,” I commented.
With her great sense of direction, Kathy had us back to the car in five minutes.
Eric sat in the hatch so he would have enough room to cradle the dog comfortably and to keep Emi from seeing how much pain Chivas was in.
John eased the car over the dirt and gravel two-track, and once back on the newly paved main road, he took the curves easy and the straight stretches fast. Within twenty minutes we were pulling into Dr. Robbins’ parking lot. I jumped out first and went inside, while John helped Eric out of the back of the car.
“Mark! I’m so glad you’re here. There’s been a shooting accident,” I panted, the adrenaline coursing through my veins.
Mark grabbed my hands to steady them. “Deep breath now. Tell me what happened.” He searched my pain-filled eyes. “Not one of the children …?” he choked out.
Just then Eric came in holding a very still Chivas.
“I’m not a veterinarian!” Mark protested. Eric laid the dog on the metal examining table anyway.
“Mark, please!” I pleaded. “Bleeding is bleeding! Can you stop it?”
He looked from me to Eric to John to Chivas and back to me. “She’s your dog, Eric?” Eric nodded. “Then you stay to keep her calm. Allexa, I need you to assist me.” Mark looked at John and said nothing. John slipped out the door to wait with Emi and Kathy.
Mark listened to various points along Chivas’ body with his stethoscope, determining that the dog was indeed still alive and breathing. He handed surgical masks and gloves to us and after he pulled on his own sterile gloves and mask, lined up alcohol, sutures, gauze, other instruments and some needles on a sterile tray. Removing my jacket from the dog, he surveyed the damaged leg and muttered a curse under his breath, then starting to clean the area.
“I hope you caught who did this,” he said gravely.
In a very calm and stoic tone, Eric repeated, “No one hurts my kid and no one hurts my dog.”
Mark’s hands stilled for a second and he shared a knowing glance with me, recalling the last person that had tried to hurt Eric’s kid, and the messy results.
“I’m going to give her a shot for the pain and to numb the area so I can probe for the bullet,” he said. “About how much does she weigh?” he asked, then calculated the dose for a small child.
“I’ll need at least one x-ray to see how far the bullet went in. We’ll have to shave her first.” When he turned on the electric shears, nothing happened.
“Today is an off day for the power,” I stated flatly and proceeded to clip Chivas’ silky fur as short as possible with a pair of scissors. “Did you know that the scissors were invented by Leonardo da Vinci?” I said as a matter of conversation, which got incredulous looks from both men standing there. “Just a piece of trivia,” I commented from behind my mask, “Although there is some evidence to support the idea that the ancient Egyptians had scissors centuries earlier.”
Mark angled the portable x-ray machine and scanned the area, watching the results from the attached digital screen, thankful it had its own battery backup.
“It appears that the bullet went clean through. That’s the good news. The bad news is it looks like an artery has been nicked and that’s why the bleeding won’t stop.”
He swabbed the area again, and asked for a retractor, which I laid in his hand. He stretched the wound open, and I handed him a sponge to soak up the blood. We worked silently for perhaps twenty minutes. He put tiny dissolving stitches in to close the hole in the small canine artery, while I kept the area visible by cleaning the pooling blood. When he removed the original retractor, I handed him the remaining suture for him to close the ragged wound.
Eric just stood by Chivas’ head, stroking her soft fur, crooning softly to her.
I used some of the alcohol to clean up the drying blood on Chivas’ fur, more for my granddaughter’s sake. Mark bandaged and then wrapped the leg immobile after checking to make sure the fragile bone wasn’t broken or dislocated. The odd angle I saw it at was apparently an illusion of the odd shape of a dog’s hind leg.
“My first non-human surgery and I think the patient is going to be just fine,” Mark said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Last thing to do is a shot of antibiotic, and you can take her home,” he said, giving her the hypo. The entire process took just over an hour and I was exhausted!
When we each removed the mask and gloves we were wearing, Eric broke into the biggest grin I’ve seen on him in a long time.
“Thank you, Dr. Robbins.” He gave Mark a handshake and a surprise hug. Eric turned to me and smiled, then his face collapsed and he started to sob. I put my arms around him and just held on.
“Okay, I didn’t expect that,” Eric said after his crying jag. He sniffed, and gave his tear streaked face a splash of cold water from the sink in the exam room before going to face his daughter.
Eric gently lifted Chivas, who was now sleeping, from the table and walked out, holding her carefully in his strong and loving arms.
“Thank you so much, Mark. I know this wasn’t something that you would normally do, but—”
“But these aren’t normal times, are they, Allexa?” He smiled back. “Someday we need to discuss your medical career; you did exceptionally well.”
* * *
Kathy lived only a few minutes from the clinic, so she walked home after she reassured John that her and Bob would be over later for dinner.
John drove up Eric’s drive and got as close to the house as possible. While John unlocked the house door with Eric’s keys, Eric carried Chivas up the stairs with Emilee trailing behind.
“I’ll be back soon with the garden cart, Eric. You can use it to bring Chivas over tonight,” John offered. It went without saying that the dog would come to the celebration.
“I can do that, Grandpa John!” Emilee jumped up. Sensing she needed to contribute, we had her come back with us to get the green metal cart.
I got one of the disposable emergency blankets from the box on top of the outside refrigerator and laid it in the wagon. Emilee said it wasn’t soft enough for her dog, so I found an old blanket too. We walked across the street together, but she insisted on pulling the heavy wagon by herself.
* * *
“I’ve got a quick errand to run,” John announced when I got back home. I saw that he had pulled one of the still wrapped steaks out of the refrigerator, and one of the small bottles of ice I was using to keep things cold and then placed them in one of my cloth shopping bags. I’d learned not to question him, especially not over this, since it was his generosity that bought those steaks in the first place. I also had a feeling I knew what his errand was.
It had been a long, hot and emotional day, and I desperately needed a shower. I started up the generator to power the well pump and stepped into a cascade of hot, pulsating water. I washed my hair, finding bits of gray moss and wondered how it got there, then remembered many of the jack-pine tree branches we all had to duck under had lacey moss growing on them. I scrubbed my face hoping to rid myself of the cloying stench of blood that clung to my every pore. Satisfied that I didn’t stink anymore, I rinsed and stepped out of the shower. I decided on a cream colored short-sleeved top and a long brown printed skirt for the occasion and stepped into my well-worn sandals.
I had just pulled the four large sirloin steaks out of the cooler to cut them in half as John
and I had discussed we would do, when he pulled into the driveway. All of the steaks were thick cut and half of any one of the steaks would be ample meat for one person. I set them on a platter, sprinkling them with garlic salt and fresh ground pepper, and then put them back in the cooler. The day was still very warm.
“I hear the generator running,” John said, smiling at me. “Good, I need a shower, too.” He kissed me on the nose and headed for the bathroom before our guests started to arrive.
* * *
It was around six o’clock when I heard Bob and Kathy pull in. They both were still sparkling from a recent dip in the lake, an advantage of living right on Lake Meade.
“I brought a dish to share for dinner,” Kathy grinned. From that look on her face I knew it had to be something special.
“Okay, what did you do now?” I teased, and lifted the cover to expose a Chanterelle Risotto, one of our favorite dishes to fix with the fresh wild mushrooms. The other favorite was a white sauce pizza drowned in sautéed orange mushrooms. Maybe that would be tomorrow night, I thought. I took a deep sniff of the risotto, and covered the dish back up.
Jason, Amanda and Jacob arrived a few minutes later and we all sat out under the boughs of the maple trees that graced my front yard with cooling shade. When a familiar compact car arrived next, I knew my suspicions were correct. John had gone back into town, paid Dr. Mark for his services with a pricey steak, and invited him to join us tonight. Those two just might get to be friends someday. Would that be a dilemma for me at some point?
The Journal: Ash Fall Page 18